Under the Effects
by Mini Reyes
Summary: She can hear them, she can, but sometimes she can't distinguish between what's real and what's not. She doesn't open her eyes, not anymore, she can't, their lids are too heavy for her frail body. She hears Alison's whispers, Felix's snark comments, Sarah's affectionate insults... Delphine's cries.


She can hear them, she can, but sometimes she can't distinguish between what's real and what's not. She doesn't open her eyes, not anymore, she can't, their lids are too heavy for her frail body. She hears Alison's whispers, Felix's snark comments, Sarah's affectionate insults... Delphine's cries. She hears most of it, but she also hears voices of the past that can't surely be in the room with her. Wait, what room? Dream and reality blur again, her head feels as foggy as ever.

"Cosima."

She hears it again, sweeter than condensed milk and richer than Lindt chocolate, it stirs, sending out a wave down her thin body, chilling her and she briefly wonders if anyone will notice the hairs on her arm raising, hopes it will alert them.

"Come on, she's dead to the world."

_Dead.  
__No. I'm not dead, I'm right here, I can hear you, just keep talking, please, I can hear you. I'm listening…  
__Please don't go!_

It takes too much effort to open her eyes let alone lift her arm and reach out to the voices that she can hear. But there's a weight on her, it feels like it's pressing her down, pressing her under and it covers her body so she can't move, but if she's honest, she doesn't really want to move. She drifts with her thoughts, unaware of how they're changing and moving off their original course. It doesn't matter anymore, nothing matters, she falls off this plane and doesn't even notice it till she's back to it and realises that she was gone, like how you don't notice how much you love someone until they've left, or you don't know how happy or high you were until you're feeling low and all the sunlight is gone.

It's dark, but her eyelids falter against the light that is beating down on them. She squeezes them tighter and her head turns away, turns back to the darkness and she has the fleeting thought that perhaps if her eyes want to open, then she should let them, just let her body take over and do what it wants to instead of fighting it.

But fighting is all she has been doing for so long now. Fighting this illness, fighting Delphine, fighting with Sarah over Kira, fighting with Leekie, fighting against Rachel… it's been one fight after another for _control_ and she can see the irony in now just letting go and letting her body decide. But is it her body? Or is it science? Or DYAD? Or_ fate?_ Does she even believe in fate? She herself is a scientist, and the science, so surely she does_ not_ believe in fate. But science cannot explain everything. It can explain emotions through hormone imbalances, how we breathe through the differentiation of elements and breaking every item down to it's molecular structure and scrutinising sub atomic particles, science can create life and technology to maintain, sustain and fix a life. Science teaches us that energy is never created nor destroyed, but how does science explain death? Death is final, in death the heart stops, muscles relax, the internal process of breaking down food and converting it to energy stops, but where does all of that energy go if it doesn't just disappear? What does that energy become? It does not make sense. Unless you believe in ghosts, then you might hypothesise that this energy becomes our ghost, our impression left on the world but as a scientist surely ghosts cannot exist? Religions tell us that after death we enter onto another plane of existence for all of eternity, unaware of passing time and watching the living but as humans on earth how can we ever prove or disprove that theory? Suppose that is why they call it a belief rather than science.

But what is in control here? Mystical beings? Unseen entities? Science? Who knows. Not she. She is barely aware of her own existence, caught somewhere between life and death, dream and reality, science and morals, waking and sleeping, conscious and unconscious, living or surviving.

It's all a haze until suddenly it's not as she latches onto a vaguely coherent thought.

_Delphine_

She needed to fix things with the immunologist.

Now she's aware of the dream world she's in and she can pull herself from it, like realising the difference between REM and consciousness she focuses on creating the effort to lift her eyelids, to let the light in.

Her eyes swirl open and the world spins into a half focus, her chest heaving in a deep breath, "Delphine," She breathes the word in as if it gives her life. The blonde curls lift from the bed and Delphine looks at her with widened eyes, jaw slack, frozen after her initial movement of hearing her name and responding to it.

"_Cosima,_" She lunges forward, a hand on the side of the woman's cold and clammy face, kissing her ferociously for someone who just woke up, "Cosima," She says again, pulling back and gripping the woman's hand tightly.

Cosima looks down at her hand- at _their_ hands.

_The weight._ The weight she felt over her body, over her arm, it was not a metaphorical one as she had thought in her previously hazy state, there was a thick, heavy hospital blanket pulled up under her armpits and Delphine's hands held her own.

"I'm sorry," Her voice is harsh from disuse, raspy.

Delphine chokes as she starts to cry, one hand quickly covering her mouth to stop herself from completely losing it, she takes a deep breath and then strokes Cosima's cheek, "Don't be. _I'm_ sorry." She reaches over for the glass pitcher and fills a plastic cup with water, bringing it to Cosima's lips.

She didn't notice just how dry and chapped they were until she leans forward and her lips meet the white plastic, Delphine slowly tipping the water into her mouth. But it doesn't quench her thirst, she leans up, rising from the bed and arching higher in an attempt to get more but Delphine keeps moving it back, trying to control the flow of the transparent liquid. She's hungry for it and her desperation shows. It takes three cups of this process before Cosima finally lies back.

"Thankyou," She whispers, head falling slightly to the side, she smiles, a small that says 'we made it'.

Delphine rises from the chair she was in and sits on the edge of the bed, moving their hands into her lap. She leans forward and presses her lips to Cosima's gently, brushing their noses together before resting her forehead on the smaller woman's.

"You're alive," Delphine's not sure why she said it, or for _whom_ she said it for, but it feels like the thing to say, it sits in her mind in a cloud of awe and euphoria.

"Yeah, ditto, obvs." She strokes Delphine's knuckles idly.

"I'm not the one whose been in a coma for three days," Delphine whispers back.

For some reason the revelation doesn't stir even a hint of alarm or surprise, she just takes it in stride, "I could hear you talking."

"I wasn't…"

"Not now, before, I could hear you… and," her brows come together as she thinks back but her head is still as dense now as the fog she was in before she pulled her eye lids up, "Alison, and Felix and Sarah and- Kira, is Kira-" the gears start turning and they pick up a fast pace as she starts to remember.

"Shhh," Delphine interrupts, lifting her head and placing a gentle finger to the woman's lips, "Don't worry about the others, they're right here."

Cosima looks out to the rest of the room and finds Sarah heavily slouched in a chair, legs spread and arms wrapped loosely around a curled up Kira on her lap, Felix is on the floor with an arm over his face and a blanket has been laid over him, clearly after he's fallen asleep given the precise manor in which it's placed, and Alison, Alison with her bandaged arm clutched to her chest and her head fallen to the side at what had to be an uncomfortable angle but asleep nonetheless.

"They're all here…" Cosima whispers and Delphine notes a tone of awe in her voice.

"Of course, they are your family."

Something twinges in her chest, "So are you,"

Their fingers interlink together and Delphine looks down at them, tears falling onto their joined hands.

"Hey," Cosima tips her head down, trying to see Delphine's face, "What's wrong?"

"You're alive," she lifts her head back up with a sniffle, wiping her eyes with her other hand.

"Um," Cosima frowns in confusion.

"I realised, I was preparing for you to die, but I didn't prepare for you to live," More tears surface unexpectedly and they start to fall as she tries to take in the reality, Cosima _will_ be okay, she might have said it ten million times but she didn't believe it, not once, only now as she sees Cosima's eyes again does she realise that everything _will_ be alright, she has a chance of beating this.

"Delphine," Cosima finds herself strangely understanding the things that Delphine isn't saying, "I was in a coma, that's not something most people come back from." She doesn't want Delphine to blame herself for thinking the things she did, she was right to think them.

"But…" Now Delphine frowns, "You heard me?"

"Yeah… maybe… I don't know, maybe I drifted in and out of it? If that's even possible. But hey, it doesn't matter now, I'm here, you're here, that's all that matters to me." She gives Delphine's hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze, "You did it."

"_You_ did it," Delphine corrects.

"Excuse you, _we_ did it. It was a team effort," Another voice speaks up.

Delphine and Cosima turn, Felix is sitting up and he kicks Sarah's foot to wake her.

Sarah grunts, "Go away," she grumbles.

"I'm kind of bed bound so if you don't want my presence then you're the one whose gonna have to leave," Cosima replies with an absolutely _giant_ smile.

"Cosima!" Sarah beams, sitting up straighter in her chair.

Felix pokes Alison's shoulder and nudges her knee, stepping back as the woman's head whips up and her eyes shoot open, "What's happened?" She asks before she's even aware of her surroundings.

"Why don't you tell me?" Cosima can't keep the smile off her face as they all gather around her bed.

"Cosima! You're awake!" Alison exclaims.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Felix says.

"'Bout bloody time you Geek Monkey, what, did ya forget how to open your eyes?" Sarah teases, shifting Kira onto her hip. Kira's eyes peek open and she smiles at Cosima but stays still and quiet, pretending to be asleep.

Cosima smiles back and opens her arms to hug all of them at once, it's not quite manageable to hold five people at the same time but she settles for a group hug and notices how Felix makes _sure_ that Delphine is included in it. It makes her smile even more because they _are_ a family, and she finally sees it.

"You did good Doc," Cosima hears Felix whisper and she can't help but squeeze her little family tighter.

They'll be alright, as long as they're all together, they'll manage. Together. As a Family.


End file.
